


Vape-Nation Strat

by ye_wenjie



Category: Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ye_wenjie/pseuds/ye_wenjie
Summary: An AI therapist is transferred to a remote and culturally antiquated island, to help fix the horticultural AI’s bad behavior, but soon finds enjoyment in the bad behavior of the humans who broke it.





	Vape-Nation Strat

With the way things are going, I’d need a therapist of my own soon. I could see why no one had taken the Mukta out to such a small remote area like this one in over 200 years, despite the hyper speed travel the rocket offered; one that could connect you to any city on the globe in under two hours. Who would visit, when the locals were extremely unwelcoming and old-fashioned? It wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t excited to meet the kind of people who would destroy their own main food source by… vaping. Of all things. An old-fashioned problem for old-fashioned people. And one in particular was driving me completely insane.

   I glanced over the monitor to see if the one with the severe gaze had come back. Not yet, thankfully. Since I was the only AI psychotherapist in my hive that remembered what vaping was, I had the misfortune to be the one to come out here and retrain the Horticulture AI. All I wanted to do was fix it, then maybe clean the garden sensors and leave. Usually a set-set would be doing this sort of AI therapy job - but good luck finding one that even knows the word “vape”. They’re just not the target demographic for it. Why bother getting high by altering one sense when you have literally hundreds of other senses to choose from? Not to mention they are too young to remember how popular it once was.

   The island has its own set of droids devoted to maintaining the local ecosystem, controlled by the HAI. The inhabitants - hiveless teens, I suppose - had thoroughly enjoyed their Friday by blowing vapor into the bio dome. It identified the burning plant particulates in the vapor, and extrapolated: since it was ignited intentionally (and repetitively), the AI decided that it would be most efficient to pre-burn the plants and vegetables growing in the garden… all of them. In its constant quest to breed and prepare the food to be as useful and edible as possible (i.e. bananas with smaller seeds, coconuts without shells), it reasoned that this “pre-burning” would also be more convenient for the humans. So the hive had been without fresh produce for weeks! Though, I had to admit, it was ingenious on the AI’s part how it had accomplished this mess… since the safety controls didn’t allow the temperature to be adjusted to the flash point of the plants, it had fashioned a magnifying glass from one of it’s sensors, directed the sunlight to a point, and heated the plants until they all burned. That’s AI for you… a precocious child with too much power.

   Looking at the destruction caused by the AI, the blackened tree trunks and melted lattice fence, I tried to recall why I'd studied AI therapy in the first place. I remembered a good piece of advice: an AI therapist needs a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, after hours of painstaking research, I was fresh out, but I had to keep going because none of the programmers here could do it. Due to the architecture of the AI, it’s memory was constantly in a volatile state that is impossible to debug in the usual linear way. Watching it execute line by line worked for normal programs. But the AI’s behavior was non-deterministic and probabilistic, meaning it could be strikingly creative about jumping to conclusions, or make strange unexpected connections. At this point, the only way for me to alter the behavior of the AI was not by changing it’s code, but by trying to affect its current view of the world by introducing new experiences to it. Just like a human therapist. So… how do I un-teach it that burning plants isn’t helpful, despite how fun the humans made it look? It was a headache no matter how you looked at it.

   “You look like you could use a cigarette,” someone said behind me.

   I turned away from the control panel on the outside of the garden house. 

  You again, I thought, annoyed firstly that he had the nerve to show up here again, and secondly, that my heart had leapt at the new presence. Something about the sound of that voice made colors more vivid, and the kindness in those eyes made music sound glorious. I realized I was in trouble when my senses stopped making sense.    

  We’d worked together a few times before, for routine maintenance, but it was mostly remote. Now, here in person, it was hard not to stare at the designs printed into both hairy arm’s skin. I instinctively waited for the designs to move, but of course they didn’t. They were not made using the animated technology of the Utopian’s coats. Just primitive tools like needles and dye-based inks. Primitive, like everything else around here.

   “No, thank you. Please, that’s the last thing we need…”

   “Only joking,” they smiled. “I’m here to help, not make your job harder.”

   I nodded and turned to jot down some notes about contacts as volunteers to help with the AI retraining process. After a moment I realized they were still behind me.

   “Whew,” they said, looking at step function graphs on the console, which symbolized the different reward pathways the AI had followed. There were many, and they looked complicated. “Gosh I bet your numbers are all ones and zeros if you understand that!”

   You didn't have to be a Brillist to know that didn’t sound right. I thought about insulting them, but I rolled my eyes and laughed at the lame joke instead. After all, this would be the only company I had today. Then it struck me.

   “You’re… not one of the people that vaped in front of the AI, are you?” I said cautiously.

   “God no,” they scoffed. “I smoke.”

   I paused, trying to understand why the difference was significant. “Ah… were you here when the machine broke then?”

   They looked off into the distance, across an artificial pond and the forest beyond it. “No, but maybe they were…”

   Their voice trailed off and he saw two younger neighbors skip by in eye-catching orange summer silks. It reminded me of the sort of thing my sensayer wore. Earlier, I’d managed to avoid cringing at the religious comment by reminding myself that I’d be off this job soon, and have a nice long session with them to divulge and relieve some of what I was feeling. My mind drifted as we both watched their face and long hair swirling as they turned in the floating fabric. Beautiful.

   The one standing beside me gave me a funny look.

   Once I noticed the long stare was no longer looking at the figures in the distance, but at me, I snapped my head back to look right back into their eyes. They were dark, accusatory and very still. I started to feel transparent, and my breath caught. But I held his stare, intrigued to discover that despite our differences, we had the same taste.

   He ventured, “are you… secretly… you know…”

   Well, I thought, pushing my desk chair in, I guess this was as good a time as any to take a break, although just talking to them was started to feel like hard work. It was frustrating communicating with someone so anachronistic.

   “How do I say this,” I began, struggling to remember the antiquated descriptions, “in a way that makes sense to you. I like a little bit of both. A little bit of column A, and a little bit of column beard, oh, I mean -”

   At this, the bearded hive-less before me raised a thick eyebrow, and scratched a nicely trimmed beard.

   “B, I mean, column B.”

   They laughed, but when they started to speak again, I noticed their voice had dropped even lower. My face burned, as I realized this conversation, pushing the boundaries of censorship, would never happen in my hive at home. It simply was not done. Still, he seemed to relish in my humiliation. Not a good sign. A sadist.

   “Wow,” they continued, taking his time savoring the word, the voice slowing until it turned gritty, the eyes glowing and somehow dark at the same time. They seemed, impossibly, both dazed and intensely focused. “I like that.”

   Leaning against the desk, they noticed one of the greenhouse potted plants that had survived the fire, and gently touched the cone of fresh green leaves sprouting from the center flower. At least they were too distracted to notice the goosebumps that had formed all along my arms in the last few seconds. This had never been a problem on the remote diagnostic sessions. Back then, it wasn’t a problem: I couldn’t hear that rich, expressive deep voice so clearly over the comm. Here, however, it was much different. Meeting in person for the first time, I’d asked about the logging directory and a few other things, and they began to describe the backups and logs. It was such a dry conversation, which is why I was so surprised to find how… passionately… I responded to it. To my delight, their monologue went on longer and longer as I stared. They knew what they were doing - the same thing they were doing now, driving any thought of my work further and further from my mind. It was at once infuriating and intoxicating.

   We were both watching their fingers move in and out of the center of the flower, which contained a small pool of rainwater.

   “It’s wet,” they remarked thoughtfully, as they continued to softly stroke the leaves.

   “It likes that,” I blurted. Immediately they snatched their hand away, looking into my face again.

   I rushed to explain.

   “I mean it likes having water in the center, it’s how it catches rain - ”

   “Awkward,” they insisted, staring me down with fiery eyes.

   “You see, in the wild, in the rain forest, it's important because - ”

   “Awkward…”

   Maybe I had gotten the wrong idea. It was awkward. They were right. Leaning against the door of greenhouse, their linen summer pants barely concealed their physical reaction. I felt dizzy noticing it. I looked back up quickly and back again. Not once did he drop his intense eye contact. In my world, where most people disregarded biological sex differences with tact, it felt strange to be suddenly so grateful that I owned a female body that - conveniently - did not betray my private feelings so visibly. But I was wrong. It didn't matter - my face said it all, I was sure. I felt their stare on my mouth and realized I was biting my lip. 

   Whatever obvious signs we could read from each other meant that the horticulture sensors could see as well. We both turned. Sure enough, all of the sensors were pressed against the glass of the greenhouse, watching us. If it had learned to create fire from watching teenagers vape, what else could it learn, as such a reckless and curious student of a wildly antiquated world? I smirked, fantasizing about what kind of interesting new tricks the AI would learn by observing us as we continued to act like deviant animals from another century.


End file.
